


Never-Melting Ice

by MagitekUnit05953234



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Blood, Ficlet, Freezing to death, Gen, Gun Violence, Immortality, Introspection, It sucks when you can't die, Temporary Character Death, but I mean he can't die and isn't trying to, suicidal behavior, vague description of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 08:47:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16092155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagitekUnit05953234/pseuds/MagitekUnit05953234
Summary: When Cor realized what Gilgamesh had done to him, he was fifteen. It was four months after he emerged from the Crag, and he was cornered. An imperial shot Cor through the skull point blank. It should have been the end of Cor Harpe Leonis. It was not.





	Never-Melting Ice

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea how kmeme fills work but. Here it is.  
> A fill for [this prompt.](https://ffxv-kinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/5690.html?thread=10943034#cmt10943034)  
> And uh. Now that I’m looking at this in the morning after I uploaded and I’m less sleep deprived I can see that it’s not really that great at all but I’m leaving it up since I don’t make a habit of deleting things if at least one person has given it kudos or bookmarked it (I hate going into my bookmarks and seeing a person has deleted the something I liked enough to bookmark)  
> So. Here this is. Take it for what it is I guess haha

* * *

How many men will Cor have to watch die before the gods are satisfied? How many friends, how many lovers, how many kings?

Countless friends are six feet under. Cor hasn't felt the touch of a man in more than a decade, at least. Three kings are dead and gone.

Cor misses the shimmer of magic between himself and the sky. He misses the sun rising over Duscae. He misses the dark silhouette of Ravatough against a miasma-filled sky.

He won't return. What point is there to being in Lucis when all that lives there are ghosts?

Cor sits down in the snow and lets it pile up around him until he is buried. It is cold —impossibly so. It doesn't change a thing.

When Cor realized what Gilgamesh had done to him, he was fifteen. It was four months after he emerged from the Crag, and he was cornered. An imperial shot Cor through the skull point blank. It should have been the end of Cor Harpe Leonis. It was not.

After thirty two seconds of unconsciousness —that seemed to be the magic number when it came to coming back alive after getting shot, Cor later found out—Cor woke up and plunged his sword into the imperial's guts. Cor wiped the gore from his face, cleaned his sword, and picked up the bullet that was once embedded in his skull. It was not the first time Cor had killed someone. It was the first time he had __been__  killed, however.

Cor carried the bullet in his pocket for three years. It was lost when King Mors died. Cor didn’t remember what he did, only that it had been incredibly foolish.

In the time between King Regis's coronation and King Noctis's ascension, Cor died four hundred and sixty three times. People christened him immortal, having no idea just how correct they were. Cor hates it.

Niflheim stretches out in front of Cor, an empty snow-laden expanse. No one has lived here since the Scourge desecrated and razed the country before the Night ever had the chance to. There is a Magitek production facility just barely visible through the snowfall, the same one Cor once rescued an infant experiment from. He wonders what Prompto is up to these days.

He wonders if Prompto is still alive.

Cor doesn't even know what year it is anymore. He has lived far too long.

The cold has seeped into Cor's flesh. His heart skips and slows, banging against icy ribs. Cor doesn't know if he can recover from freezing to death if he never thaws out. Shiva's wrath is supposed to last until the goddess turns her gaze from Eos forever, and she never will. Supposedly she loves humanity more than anything else. Cor isn't so sure.

 _Stop this,_ Gilgamesh's voice rattles in Cor's mind, scraping it's way across the bone encasing his brain. _Return to your Crown. Fight._

 _There is no Crown._ Cor stares at the cloudy Niflheimian sky above _. There is no King. Not anymore. Let me free._

 _Live,_ Gilgamesh insists.  _Serve._

Cor wakes up to early-morning warmth beating down on him from a clear, orange-pink sky. The ground underneath his body is grassy. A crumbling ruin, once-familiar, boxy, and dark sits on the horizon guarded by rusted-out ruins of dropships and barbed wire fencing.

Not even the tundras of the Empire are capable of stagnation. Not like Cor.

The Immortal pulls himself up from the ground, brushes leaves from his skin, and follows the sunrise.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on Twitter [@compromisedunit](https://mobile.twitter.com/compromisedunit)!


End file.
